BTP76: The Science of Intuition with Mary Greer

The Science of Intuition, with Mary Greer

Today, we’re diving into the Biddy Tarot Podcast archives to bring you the best and most popular podcast on Tarot. Today’s archive episode is our first interview.

It was an interview I was very excited to do, and it’s with Tarot grandmaster Mary K. Greer. In this interview, Mary Greer talks a lot about the science of intuition, and specifically, we talk about:

• How intuition really works in a Tarot reading
• The difference between psychic and intuitive
• Why when we think that we’re being highly intuitive, we can sometimes be a little bit off track

The response that we had after this podcast was huge, so I wanted to bring it out of the archives again and replay it for you so that you can get all of the benefits from this juicy conversation with Mary K. Greer.

Additional Resources

Mary K. Greer’s Tarot blog

Learn the Five Simple Steps to Read Tarot with Confidence

Check out the Biddy Tarot blog

Podcast Transcript

You’re listening to the Biddy Tarot Podcast, and this is Episode 76: The Science of Intuition with Mary Greer.

Welcome to the Biddy Tarot Podcast, where you’ll learn how to connect more deeply with your intuition and live an empowered and enlightened life with the Tarot cards as your guide.

Listen as Brigit and her guests share their very best tips and strategies to help you read Tarot with confidence. Now, here is your host, Brigit Esselmont.

BRIGIT: Hello and welcome to the Biddy Tarot Podcast. Today, we’re diving into the Biddy Tarot Podcast archives to bring you the best and most popular podcast on Tarot. Now, today’s archive episode is our first interview. It was an interview I was very excited to do, and it’s with Tarot grandmaster Mary Greer.

In this interview, Mary Greer talks a lot about the science of intuition, and specifically, we talk about:

• How intuition really works in a Tarot reading
• The difference between psychic and intuitive
• Why when we think we're being highly intuitive, we can sometimes be a little bit off-track

The response that we had after this podcast was huge, so I wanted to bring it out of the archives again and replay it for you so that you can get all of the benefits from this juicy conversation with Mary K. Greer.

Let’s get into it.

The Science of Intuition, with Mary Greer

BRIGIT: Hello, and welcome to the third episode of the Biddy Tarot Podcast. Today, we’re talking about intuition. As Tarot readers, we know it’s essential to connect with our intuition when reading the Tarot cards. It’s really what makes a Tarot reading magical and insightful, but connecting with our intuition can often be hard or challenging. Intuition is kind of this intangible thing that we don’t always completely understand… Or do we? Perhaps there’s a little bit more to intuition than meets the eye.

Today, I’m speaking with someone very special to the Tarot world about the science of intuition. She is someone who I would call the grandmother of Tarot and who has been incredibly influential in Tarot over the last 40 years through her books, workshops, and classes. She is the author of two of the most pivotal books in Tarot, Tarot for Yourself and 21 Ways to Read the Tarot Cards. She is none other than the legendary Mary Greer. Welcome, Mary. It’s so good to have you here.

MARY: I’m really glad to be on your podcast. Thank you, Brigit.

BRIGIT: Wonderful. Before we get into all the juicy stuff around intuition and the science that sits around intuition, can you tell me a little bit about how you found Tarot in the early days, or perhaps how Tarot found you?

MARY: Well, that goes back to the ‘60s. I hate to say how long ago it was, but I was in college, and a friend got Eden Gray’s book The Tarot Revealed for Christmas, and she didn’t get a deck, so we were looking at the book trying to figure out what you do with this, and it really works.

I remember this feeling of jealousy, which was rather unusual. I wanted that book, and I wanted these decks. They seemed to speak to me, and that was based on my having started studying in college the Jungian approach to literature. I was a literature major, so the whole idea of the collective unconscious and archetypes and symbols… I was also reading Joseph Campbell with the Hero’s Journey.

To me, I could see that these were stories that you could tell about people that helped to see them in that kind of a context. What were the main symbols in their life? What were the issues that they were dealing with on this journey? It turned out that indeed Eden Gray called it (she was the first person to name it) the Fool’s Journey, similar to the Hero’s Journey. Later, people also drew parallels. I was already starting to put that together, looking at these images and seeing how you told stories with them.

I went on my first spiritual question, borrowing a car, asking everyone, “Where can I find the cards that go with this book?” That kind of became my journey to find how to use this. Then I just started reading for everybody and all their friends. People would go, “How did you know that?” I would go, “Well, that’s what the cards say.”

BRIGIT: Yeah.

MARY: It really worked for me, especially in terms of my studies in literature, and also I was in theatre. A lot of the works we were focusing on had heavy symbolic meanings, and I said, “We’re living these same mythic stories. It’s just about seeing that context, and the cards help us to do that.”

BRIGIT: Yeah, absolutely. I imagine that the ‘60s were actually quite different in terms of Tarot than, say, now when we’ve got thousands of Tarot decks, so many Tarot books available. The information available to learn Tarot is huge. Was that quite different to when you first discovered the Tarot cards?

MARY: Oh yeah. When I first found them, at the stores, I could find just the Rider-Waite deck and the Marseilles Tarot. I got a Marseilles Tarot fairly early on but never could make heads or tails of it, because I really responded to the images and the storytelling ability based on these symbols. For me, that became my core deck, and it wasn’t until a couple of years later that other decks that were being developed at that time became readily available. We had the New Tarot for the Aquarian Age, which was rather strange but exciting at the same time, and David Palladini’s Aquarian Tarot, other ones that were coming in at the time.

BRIGIT: Yeah, and I suppose there would be all of this creative space to figure out how you want to connect with the Tarot cards versus what you might be reading the experts say in terms of reading Tarot.

MARY: I think in a way we have a little more creativity now because we’ve been opened up to there being a lot of options. At first, it was having to go to the books because I did know anybody else that read Tarot, so going to the books to try to figure it out. The only thing that really made the connection for me was that Jungian connection, and everybody else was making that connection at the same time, but it was still much more narrow. We weren’t creating spreads yet. We weren’t creating our own decks. I would say now we’ve got much more license to be creative, but the small areas in which we were feeling creative, we delved into it in much more depth earlier on.

BRIGIT: Yeah, interesting. I would say the books that you wrote, 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card, are very much about the self-exploration side of Tarot, which I think is just fabulous. I think that’s where all the energy is and the specialness of the Tarot, when we work with it on a personal individual level.

MARY: Thank you, but realise that that was also at least 12 to 15 years after I had been into the Tarot.

BRIGIT: Right.

MARY: So that was developing along with other developments in my life by putting together a lot of work. I was dealing with deep, intensive journal work and guiding people through that and all the stuff that came up in the late ‘70s and the early ‘80s, alternative methods of teaching that were really being explored that I happened to be right on the cutting edge of, especially in San Francisco where we felt free to explore some of these and push boundaries, but that was almost a next stage, definitely well after the ‘60s.

BRIGIT: OK. Wonderful. How do you now see the Tarot working for you, particularly bringing in the concept of intuition? How do you see Tarot and intuition partnering together?

MARY: That’s a huge subject in its own right because I don’t think we can escape from it. Intuition is a totally natural aspect of our lives, of our way of thinking. When we’re looking at cards and making up stories about them, we’re definitely operating in that realm of intuition, which is at the core of storytelling, of imagination. It’s also the basis of our gut feeling, and that’s where we’re told to try to access when we’re working with Tarot. What does our gut tell us about what is going on here? All of that is intuition.

I should say I see intuition as really being part of a continuum, and it’s a bridge between the unconscious and the conscious. It goes all the way from pure instinct to those gut feelings, which is kind of a step up, to empathy, which really brings in the feelings and (if we get into the science) what are called “mirror neurones” that we develop when we’re just babies. We start mirroring people. They’re smiling, or they’re frowning, and we get associations between pleasure and pain, according to what we mirror in the people around us. We start mirroring them on very subtle levels of emotions. That’s the basis of empathy. Then we get into intuition, which operates not through conscious, rational, analytical thinking. Then it goes on up into the conscious, ration and logical.

Somewhere along that continuum is the psychic, and I think that I’m different in that I see psychic perceptions and intuition as different. They’re along that same continuum, and there are no hard edges. One can trigger the other and feed off the other, but I do see them as different.

BRIGIT: Are you able to put into words how you see the difference between psychic and intuitive abilities?

MARY: The simplest way to see it, the core of it, is that intuition is based on information in the environment. We take that information in from somebody that we are sitting across from, or even speaking on the phone to, or even the way in which they phrase an email question, although we get less information that way. We get information from all these different sources, and intuition puts it together very quickly and recognises patterns based on our experience, a large part of which are unconscious memories. The psychic ability has no physical, sensory input in that the psychic information doesn’t come because somebody is wearing a paint-splattered shirt. Intuition will pick that up and put it together with a lot of other stuff even unconsciously. With the psychic ability, all of a sudden, you’re seeing palm trees and beach and feeling warm moistness, and you go, “Oh, did you just come back from Hawaii or somewhere?”

BRIGIT: Yeah.

MARY: And the person goes, “How did you know?” You kind of stumble because there is no sensory information there.

BRIGIT: Yeah.

MARY:  I just had the feelings of the moisture and the heat and images of palm trees, but there was nothing in the environment to give you that information.

BRIGIT: Yes, OK. I’ve never heard such a clear explanation between the psychic and the intuitive elements. I think that makes it very crystal clear.

MARY: Yes. Psychic is paranormal. It’s beyond the normal. Intuition is normal.

BRIGIT: Yeah, OK. Say for a Tarot reader… I know this is something that plays on a lot of people’s minds. “Oh my goodness, am I psychic enough? If I’m not having all these psychic insights, am I still going to be a good Tarot reader?” What’s your perspective on that?

MARY: There are many, many different kinds of Tarot readers, and I think it’s important for people to start learning to really work on their strengths and then eventually work on their weaknesses. But first, get in touch with where your strengths are, and learn to work with those. For somebody who is very psychic and uses the cards to just start some kind of trigger action into their own psychic awareness place, that’s fine, and they should go with that. Somebody that’s intuitive… I’m highly intuitive. I recognise patterns very quickly, and then I look for the meaning in those patterns or help someone to find the meaning in those patterns. I’m also very empathic. As a matter of fact, I have to watch it because I will start feeling with the person, which can get me into a lot of trouble. I’ve had to learn to differentiate that from the intuitive sense that I have of what’s going on.

It’s more important to be able to distinguish what modes you're using. I think you can be more accurate and get yourself in less trouble the more you understand the energies that you work with most naturally and best.

BRIGIT: Yeah. I think that’s a really good way of looking at it in terms of not saying that you must be ultra-psychic to be a great reader. It’s more about working with what you can do already and where your strengths and talents lie.

I’m interested with intuition and, say, the use of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) – do you see quite a partnership there? I’ve always been attracted to NLP because it’s almost a scientific breakdown of how we intuit things through more verbal cues. Have you seen those two play together?

MARY: I’m not really well versed in NLP, but I know what you're talking about in terms of people breaking down a lot of the stages of intuition. The things that we subconsciously notice, NLP tried to make them more conscious and aware. What direction somebody’s eyes go, what their bodily reaction is. I haven’t gotten trained in it, but I am very aware of people’s reactions. For instance, you turn over a card, and it’s the Tower, and the person draws back. I usually say to them, “I saw you draw back when you saw this card. Look at the card and tell me what in it had you react that way.”

BRIGIT: Yeah.

MARY: Then I’m hearing how they’re responding to it and where that drawback, which I assume (my intuition tells me) is probably related to some kind of fear. It may not be huge. It could just be mild. And that we need to move through that in order to get to a full range of possibilities.

BRIGIT: Yeah. Absolutely. Do you think that, say, something like intuition, which often is dealing with an intangible element, do you think it is something that we can break down into “Look for these kinds of things, and that might tell you X, Y, Z”? Or do you think it’s always going to be something that kind of has a bit of an enigma around it?

MARY: It has a bit of an enigma around it. Of course, it will. Anybody that is researching it comes up against that to some extent, even though they can find out in research that something works and something doesn’t. But how that changes or manifests in a person’s life bleeds off into so many things. For instance, if people spend a lot of money on something, they will convince themselves that that was the right decision, and what they did is valuable. If you give them a choice then to go with something different that could be of theoretically equal value but to exchange their experience, often they’ll cling to the original thing because they’ve convinced themselves so deeply of the value of it. It’s one reason that we get so many comments from readers who say, “My clients tell me how accurate I am and how wonderful the reading is.” A certain amount of that is if you just spent $30 or $60 or whatever it is for a reading, you’re going to convince yourself how important it was and find the most important and significant things in that experience, even if you have to make them up.

BRIGIT: Interesting.

MARY: If you ask that client what the most important thing you said was, if you really listen to them and give them plenty of space to answer, sometimes they will tell you the exact opposite of what you said.

BRIGIT: Yes.

MARY: And you go, “Wait a minute! I didn’t say that! I said the opposite!” and they’ll go, “No, no, I heard you say this.” Most of us don’t do that extra step of having a client reiterate what they heard or what they got out of the reading specifically. I think people would be very surprised if they did.

BRIGIT: Yeah, and maybe that’s a good extra step that people can put into their Tarot reading process, I suppose. At the end of the reading, have that client summarise what they heard so that you can check in to make sure that that is consistent with what you're relaying as a reader.

MARY: But you have to train yourself to really be open and hear what they say also.

BRIGIT: Oh, OK. Yes.

MARY: A lot of intuition is really to train the intuition because… Let me get into a little bit of the negative side. A lot of what we think is intuition actually consists of our projections. As a matter of fact, if you wanted to say “What’s the basis of readings? How do they work?”, you could give a very good argument for it being simply projections that work that we fiddle around with until they come into alignment with the person. A lot of the intuition – our biases, our prejudice, our assumptions and opinions, our beliefs about things, faulty information as well as accurate information, and all of our old experiences. If there’s a dog on a card, we might project “Dogs are man’s best friend,” or somebody else might project “Dogs can really be a companion, but you have to be careful that they don’t startle you.” And you go, “Oh yeah! I’ve been having this thing where I got startled and such. How did you know?”

BRIGIT: Yeah.

MARY: There’s not really the intuitive thing going on. The client found a way to make a connection, and now we’re off. We’re building a story. This is one of the scientific things that they found is that once somebody starts building a story and getting into the details of it, it’s very hard to break out of that story. Online forums have been wonderful because if you sit there and analyse people’s readings for someone else, especially when you have a whole group of people giving their individual readings of somebody’s cards, you're going to find that there’s a whole range of answers, and a lot of them are the kind of… Well, you know, there’s a dog in the image, and dogs are frightening, so there’s a frightening element in this. And, you know, bringing in these individual things and then building a whole story off of that, where it might just be a small and insignificant to someone else piece of the reading. There are so many other images in the cards. Why did they pick on that one? It’s pretty easy if you really go through and analyse people to find this.

The other thing is wishful thinking, and that ties in with our tendency to want to fix people, to give them solutions. If somebody asks, “Will I get the award?” you’ll have people say, “Yes, you can get it if you will do this and this and this” that they’re picking up from the cards. Now, had they answered the question? No, the question was yes or no. You’re not going to get the award, or you're not going to get the award. What we want to do is fix them by giving them some sort of positive framework out of our own experience, out of our assumptions of how to do that, that we’ll make the person feel better, more comfortable, more relaxed, and might actually help them to be in a better place to get whatever it is that they want.

BRIGIT: Yeah.

MARY: It’s not all bad news, our doing that, but it’s interesting how we’ll jump from the question itself to something else because we are trying to fix the person, find a sense of joy from them based on our opinions and our experiences and our storytelling. How does it fit in with the story that we start perceiving? How can we make it fit in?

Intuition jumps immediately to conclusions about things. “Yes, you can get this if…” because now I can give you advice, which means that I can fix any fear that you have that you won’t get it.

BRIGIT: Yeah.

MARY: If we’re training our intuition, we have to train ourselves to know when we’re doing all of those different things.

BRIGIT: Right. Yeah. Say, for example, the fixing piece, do you think that is still adding value to the reading? Or do you think it’s better that we stop getting into fixing mode and just deliver the answer? Or are we doing the right thing by getting into fixing mode? Or do we just need to be conscious that we’re doing it and then label it as that? Does that make sense?

MARY: A little bit of all of them. Part of it depends on the kind of reader you are. I can’t say somebody is absolutely bad at it. I have a personal inner need to try to fix people, and it gets in the way of clear information. Therefore, I try to catch myself as soon as I go into fixing mode because ultimately I’m trying to fix a dis-ease in myself when I empathise with distress in someone else. I then feel distressed in myself, and I want to get out of that feeling, and therefore I try to fix them because it will make me ultimately feel better. I recognise this whole pattern, and as soon as I see it, I’ve got a little mantra to myself which is “You don’t have to fix it. You don’t have to fix it.”

As I settle into that, I can start seeing the situation much more clearly, and it usually releases a piece that they haven’t even asked for. It goes also in with my own philosophy which is that I can’t fix anybody else; they can only fix themselves. Therefore, I can start working with them to help them find the way to find meaning in or find some kind of understanding in the situation, which my philosophy says is one of the best ways for them to begin the process of fixing the situation for themselves, for them to find a point of empowerment for themselves, their own point of power in a situation. If I can facilitate that, that to me is the best of what I can do, but it’s based on that’s my philosophy, and that’s what gives me that sense that I’m offering the most that I can to anybody I’m working with. The best that I can.

BRIGIT: Yeah, OK. Rather than…

MARY: My fixing it is the lazy way, and it’s really serving myself more than them.

BRIGIT: Right, yeah. If someone was to receive an unwanted or unexpected or somewhat negative message, you would see your role as the reader to help them find the answer for themselves and perhaps facilitate the process so that they could discover the answers for fixing that themselves, rather than you giving specific advice of “Do this; do that.” Is that a summary?

MARY: Or not even needing to fix it. Sometimes we just need to recognise it. The Five of Cups is the card where is someone is standing in the Rider-Waite deck, black cloak, and there are three spilt cups in front of them and two upright cups behind. In the background, there is a river and a bridge over it and little house on the other side. So many people immediately say, “You’ve got to stop crying over things that aren’t working or whatever has disappointed you, and turn around, pick up those cups, and cross the bridge to the other side.”

My sense of it is that, to me, is trying to fix it. My sense of it is “Oh, you’ve really been disappointed in something. Let’s look at what that is. What is the disappointment here?” For a moment, being with them in that experience, and then guiding them through a process of determining… Do they need to grieve? Is this where they need to be?” Is the most appropriate place? Or is there something urging them to move on at this point or do something different? Do they need to look at those cups that are behind them? Is it time to shrug off that black cloak? Helping them to see where it is that their intuition is telling them to move and to go.

BRIGIT: Yeah, absolutely.

MARY: Yeah.

BRIGIT: In some ways, it almost becomes… Well, it’s becoming more important for the client to see what’s in the cards versus you as the reader. I think that’s quite a style difference. There are some readers that almost expect to do all the talking during a whole reading, which is to convey the information, convey advice and, as you said, fixing, whereas this is quite a pivot, where it’s more about facilitating the process within the client to tap into their own intuition perhaps through some guided questions so that then they can walk out of that session with a stronger feeling of empowerment and that they can do something about the situation versus being told what to do?

MARY: Yeah, and that’s partly my own philosophy and way of looking at things. There are excellent readers, and sometimes we need a reader who is just going to give us some bold information. “Will this work out?” I go to Lenormand cards when I want that kind of answer. I found them to be surprisingly accurate on very factual things, anywhere from finding lost objects to just letting somebody know whether or not something is going to happen in the near future. They work best in something that’s very current, not long-term things, like “Will I ever get married?” Lenormand cards aren’t going to help you very much, especially if it’s something off in the distance.

With Tarot, I really do prefer to go deeper, but a lot of it is more of being a fair witness to where the person is. In recognising where they are, they often come to their own realisation whether I actually guide them through it or not. Sometimes they just need somebody to hear that they’re grieving and that that’s OK. Somebody that says, “It’s really time for you to move on,” and a reader can just say, “You are grieving,” you know?

BRIGIT: Yeah.

MARY: That can be very, very powerful in its own right.

BRIGIT: I think that’s really interesting. I think a lot of readers could benefit from just simply stating what’s happening. It’s kind of like shining the light of consciousness on the now, as opposed to trying to, as you said, fix and resolve. Even just to do it as an experiment in the next reading that you do, just almost convey what you see in the now, and then leave it at that and see. How does that feel, and what are your experiences as the reader? What does the client experience? I think that could be very interesting.

MARY: And it goes along with the idea that we intuitively feel that intuition is going to be a doorway to the truth. The more we keep with the very simple, immediate things in the now, the closer we can be to that, and not trying so much to tell somebody of how they are but to guide them through a process and be that fair witness to what it is that they are feeling.

If you have a client describe a card from the Rider-Waite deck or any deck that has a good pictorial scene on it, they’re going to say what their situation is, and someone just repeating what they’ve said and having them hear from somebody else is that clarification for them of “This is what is; this is where I am; this is what I’m dealing with.” How many readings have we done where a person says… A relationship reading that’s going bad, and they keep saying, “Yes, but it just doesn’t work. This advice you're giving me, I’ve tried it. It doesn’t work. It’s not working.” What if we as a reader just say, “I hear you say it’s not working.”

BRIGIT: Yeah.

MARY: I did that with one person once that was having a very bad relationship issue, and she called me a year later and said, “You know, I wanted a new reading with you because the last one worked out so well. You told me that my relationship just wasn’t working with my husband, and I got a divorce, and I am so happy now!”

I said, “I told you to get a divorce?!” And after we talked it over for a few minutes, she finally kind of laughingly acknowledged that, no, she had told herself that.

BRIGIT: Yes.

MARY: She remembered it as me saying it, but the reality was that I had just reiterated what she was saying and acknowledged that as her own wisdom.

BRIGIT: Yep, and I think that is just so incredibly powerful because I think Tarot readers often feel like they have to have the answers, but I actually think maybe it’s that we’ve got to have the questions, and our clients have the answers.

MARY: Yes.

BRIGIT: But we can ask very conscious questions based on what we’re seeing in the cards and what we’re intuiting at the time, and then it’s almost like it plants the seed. You don’t have to see the result in that session. I remember experiencing that a few years ago, where I was doing face-to-face readings, and I would think, “Oh, we haven’t quite got there!” I would be wrapping up the reading and thinking, “Oh, it’s not quite right.”

And then I would hear from them a few days later. “Oh my goodness, Brigit! I went away from that reading, and it all just started sinking in, and everything became apparent.” I think often we have to allow the space after the reading for that seed to be planted and then to start to manifest and unfold for the client, yet we kind of want that instant response if we’re too caught up in the actual reading.

MARY: Yeah, I had a situation with a Ten of Pentacles where we went through a couple of the options of what it could be, and I said, “One of the older traditions is that it’s an inheritance – could that be that?” The person kept saying, “No, no, no. It’s not that.”

Finally, I just admitted I had no idea what that card was doing in the reading and what it meant. Interestingly, a couple of months later, she called me up and said, “You know that card you couldn’t figure out? It was an inheritance!”

BRIGIT: Yeah.

MARY: And she had insisted that, no, that could not possibly be it. One thing I’ve learned is that I’m not as attached as I used to be to being right. Sometimes I will deliberately be wrong because it gives the client an opportunity. That’s where my intuition comes. When is this a moment for me to say something that I know is wrong so that my client can correct me?

BRIGIT: Yeah.

MARY: And that I can then say, “Oh, let’s look at that.” Or “You know, that feels right. I think you’ve got it.” Those have been some of the most powerful moments in readings. To me, that’s my intuition telling me now is the moment for me to step back, for me to be wrong, for me to give them the moment and the opportunity to have this insight. Have I dug a big enough hole for them to fall into? That’s basically my mental image. My intuition is just stepping back for a moment to give them enough space to do that, and I’m perfectly fine with being wrong in those contexts if it allows them the opportunity to have that breakthrough moment.

BRIGIT: I think ultimately this is all about separating from the ego and letting go of the go and letting more of… I don’t know the words for it, but letting the something unfold more organically.

MARY: Yeah, and that’s one of the big things. There are a couple of checkpoints when you’re working with intuition, and that is whenever you feel the need to convince the other person of something, it’s probably not your intuition. The stronger you feel that you have to browbeat them, convince them, get them to see something, the more likely it is that you're stuck in something in yourself. If you're trying to fix them, if there’s a judgment attached… “It’s wrong to leave your husband.” Whenever there’s a judgment attached… The more nonjudgmental you are in your intuition, the more likely it is that you're touching on something that’s real. If there is worry or fear in you… “Oh, I’ve got to get this. Oh, I’ve got to figure it out for them.” You’re stepping out of your intuition.

The more you feel expansive, nonjudgmental, that something is almost too obvious for you to even bother putting into words because, of course, anybody could see it. That’s another thing that not necessarily everybody can see it. Sometimes they need you to put that into words, but if it feels just too much “what is” to even bother mentioning, there’s a likelihood that that’s an intuitive insight.

The more clarity and detachment you have, unemotional, calmness about the situation… “If it works for them, fine; if it doesn’t, fine.” …the more chance is that you're working with your intuition. The more you feel pushed, anxious, determined to get them to see, the more you're stepping out of that intuitive sense.

BRIGIT: Yep. My goodness. That is golden. I think that’s what people struggle with so much. “When do I know it’s my intuition talking? Or is it just me? Am I trying to make it something that it’s not?” I think what you’ve outlined there is so incredibly helpful because they are things that you can really see and notice when you're doing a reading, and if you're in tune with yourself, which is most of what us Tarot readers are, you can start to feel it when you are becoming, as you said, more pushy or determined with a certain message, or even if you are feeling a little bit judgmental… I think that’s absolutely wonderful.

Oh my goodness, Mary. We could talk about this forever! I’ve had so much fun on this podcast and this conversation. It’s been incredibly insightful, and I just know that we’ve probably just scraped the surface of everything that you know. I want to say, firstly, a massive thank-you for sharing everything that you’ve shared today and, of course, everything that you do in the Tarot world. I think you're an absolute beacon of light and such a lovely, wonderful person, who is very humble and approachable. I want to say I appreciate that very much.

One last question is where can people go to find out more about you?

MARY: Oh, my blog is probably the best place. There is a whole range of different articles from history to Lenormand to different aspects of Tarot. That’s at MaryGreer.wordpress.com.

BRIGIT: Fabulous. We’ll make sure to include that in the show notes as well, and I’m going to also include a couple of links to your most popular books. You’ve done a lot of things, so I’ll pop in a few of my personal favourites.

Thank you so much, Mary. I appreciate it so much, and I know that our listeners will also have gotten a huge amount out of today’s conversation. Thank you for being a part of it.

MARY: Thank you, Brigit. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation, too.

BRIGIT: Wonderful. If you loved this podcast, then make sure that you leave a five-star review on iTunes, and subscribe to get the latest podcast. I’m so looking forward to being a part of your journey with the Tarot in the future. Until next time, I am sending you lots of love and support as you connect with the Tarot cards. Thank you and goodbye!

This was just such a delightful and engaging conversation that just really got my mind bending a lot around intuition and Tarot.

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